


The Accidental Muse

by saltwaterselkie



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Art, Established Relationship, F/F, Immortality, Immortals, Oneshot, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Pre-Canon, anyone else curious about that Rodin comment?, bc i was, for Quynh specifically, love through the centuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:53:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25362694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltwaterselkie/pseuds/saltwaterselkie
Summary: Andromache of Scythia was photogenic before photos were cool.Alternately: Artists like drawing immortals. They’ve got a certain… timeless quality.(and yes, title can be read as a pun for Andy's "ax")
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko
Comments: 36
Kudos: 310





	The Accidental Muse

**Author's Note:**

> I needed to write something after watching the movie, so here it is. Because Andy/Quynh just needed to happen. Too obvious.

It starts when Andromache of Scythia is in the early years of her immortality.

She is forty-eight and still looks half her age when it first happens. She’s riding out to meet a group of nomads that might be open to trade. When she arrives, swinging off of her horse with a smile on her face and a fresh kill in her hands, she notices a man at the edge of the nomads’ fire who stares at her far too intently.

They hash out a deal for Scythian protection in exchange for some of the beautifully woven cloths of the nomads. Andromache is sure her rabbit, contributed to a communal stew, had as much to do with the agreement as the charisma she so easily musters when around others. It’s easy to be brave when you know a rival can’t slit your throat, stab you in the back, or poison your food.

Well… they _can_. It just wouldn’t do much to Andromache, and she knows it.

When she glances towards the edge of the circle, where the firelight flickers outward instead of glowing steady, she notices that the man is still there. A mortal Andromache might shift uncomfortably under the man’s gaze; she is not mortal, and she lifts her chin in a silent challenge.

The Scythian language is similar enough to that of the nomads that they’ve been able to get across all that is necessary for the trade deal. It’s certainly similar enough that when the man lifts his voice towards her as she’s rising to leave, asking her to join him for a moment, she understands him perfectly.

She still narrows her eyes in suspicion. Just because she knows she can’t die doesn’t mean it won’t hurt if he tries to kill her.

Does he know of her already-burgeoning reputation? Does he want to test it for himself? No matter. If that is the case, and he kills her, she will kill him back and wash her hands of the affair. If he wants her for something else… that interests her. So she goes to him.

Up close, she sees he has dark, wrinkled brown skin and a twinkle in his eye. “Please,” he says, “let me put you in the world.”

She doesn’t understand what he’s saying until he leads her to a small tent that must be his own. She sees the inside by torchlight, and it is astonishing. Bits and pieces of animal hide hang off the poles of the structure – sections of hide so small that they would serve no other use. She is astounded by them.

Not because they are hides. Because they are _people._

Charcoal marks the tanned surfaces of the swatches of hides. It’s like seeing the blurred face of one’s reflection in a river – but these images are motionless. Andromache has seen the children of her village draw crude images in the dirt with sticks; the Scythians call _that_ art, but this is something more. This is something wonderful.

Her breath catches as she marvels. He has given human life permanent form.

It feels personal, to Andromache. Like these pictures, she too will remain the same forever. She too is stamped into reality in a shape that will not change.

“Please,” the man says again, gesturing to a full bear hide that seems to act as both covers and padding for his bed. He picks up a swatch of hide and a charcoal stick, the latter long, thin, and obviously burnt specifically to provide him a tool by which to make his pictures.

Andromache plops down, as requested. Somewhat awkwardly. She has never done something like this before. He settles down across from her and gives her an encouraging smile.

His hand starts to fly across the hide he places on his lap. As the charcoal moves, he talks to her. She doesn’t understand some of the words, but she gets a few phrases. One, in particular, sticks with her. “There’s something about you,” he says, “that begs to be captured. A look in your eyes. I will never see it again.”

He seems quite confident of that. She shifts about until he tells her to be still, and then she is. Her world is that of the battlefield and the protection of her people, not quietude in hardy little tents made of oiled leather. Not silence as someone else takes her face and does what they will with it.

When the man finishes, he turns the hide around so she can see herself in it. She jolts back at the likeness. It must be her, for she believes in his skill, but it is the first time she has ever seen herself clearly, and it shocks.

She has dark hair and sharp eyes and, looking at herself rendered in his hand, she can see why she intimidates so easily. It is something about the serious jut of her chin, the natural set of her lips. Andromache of Scythia is captivating, and for the first time she can understand why the man was drawn to her.

She lets him keep the picture. She never learns his name.

<><><>

The next artist whose eye she catches is a young woman from the Scythian group. Andromache catches the woman scratching out her features in the dirt. She does not ask the woman to stop, but she does start noticing how many side-eyed glances she receives from her when they cross paths. The woman only shows Andromache an image once. It is of Andromache’s lips, pictured in the dirt.

Like the man’s drawing, but impermanent. The next rain will wash it away. The woman kisses Andromache there on the ground, and Andromache kisses back, and this is just as curious and just as temporary as the picture in the dust.

<><><>

By the time of the Renaissance, Andromache has lived centuries upon centuries. She does not know why, but artists seem drawn to her as they are to Quynh, as they were to Lykon. Yet to Quynh and Lykon they drifted like solitary moths drawn to a flame; around Andromache they flock, as if they are birds and she is offering fresh-baked bread.

Quynh told her once, when they were lying side by side and tracing lazy kisses down each other’s necks, that it was a look Andromache had about her. “As if you have carried the world for eons and still believe it has promise. You _feel_ so much, Andromache. It is impossible not to sense the emotions that spill over.”

It is true, Andromache supposes; the thrill of the battle, the fire in her heart when Quynh touches her, the sorrow of a lost child or a culture killed, have not dimmed with her age. Each new victory promises her that this immortality has given more than it has taken. She believes that. It is very difficult not to, with Quynh by her side – the two of them could be forever.

They travel often and stay nowhere for long, but there are plenty of Renaissance painters who take one look at Andromache and beg for a week, a day, an hour with her. Quynh takes up drawing, becomes rather good at it with a century of practice, and insists one day that she did it so Andromache could be her muse.

“I don’t like sharing you so much,” was her comment as to why. “I like to think I’m the only one who gets you whenever I want.”

Andromache grows more careful as the world interconnects. She does not allow herself to be painted more than once a decade; better still is when the artist promises to hide her away in the fringes of a painting, when her carefully-rendered image joins a group of oil-painted passersby or is tucked under the wing of a pompous false husband. She is more discreet when she is less alone.

Still, when her own eyes stare out at her, she can’t understand how they could be unrecognizable in any context. It is not a statement of vanity, simply of fact. There’s a depth to her eyes that even the least talented artists she has worked with – and that is no small amount of talent, indeed – seems unable _not_ to capture it.

Immortality, it seems, shows itself in mysterious ways.

<><><>

She and Quynh go through periods of monogamy, though they sometimes drift as well. They decided early on in their relationship that immortals are not meant to be beings of jealousy. They are not the same as Nicolo and Yusef, who not so much avoid other partners as find no need for them. Quynh and Andromache could be each other’s only, if they so chose, but sometimes they wish to sleep apart, and their love is no less for it.

But sometimes the only partner they want to share a bed with is each other. It is during one of these periods that the witch trials occur.

Andromache falls to her hubris. She has never been able to imagine that she could not prevent her own capture, so she hardly tries. She has always escaped before. This time will be no different; besides, she thinks, it was well worth it for the lives she and Quynh have saved. Andromache believes that they will be free within the fortnight.

She cannot fathom what the consequences of such pride could be – not when she and Quynh are hanging side by side and gasping back to life together only to die again on repeat. Not when they are taken to be burned.

Only when she sees the iron maiden and Quynh is ripped away from her does Andromache understand the true extent to her folly. It is not only her life in the balance; it is Quynh’s sanity.

And Andromache has lost it.

For many, many years after that, she is so busy searching that she does not give artists the time of day. Sometimes they draw her anyway. When she snatches the paper from the hand of one particularly bold man, she sees that her eyes are different, now. She no longer exudes life. She looks deeply, deeply sorrowful.

It hurts her to see herself that way. She retreats inward still more, despite Yusef and Nicolo’s support, despite the fact that she is hurting them, too.

People still like to, want to, need to draw her.

<><><>

In 1876, after she has found Booker and seen her loneliness chipped away just a fraction more, she meets Rodin. He is not as famous as he will be. The only reason she sits for him is his promise that he will not capture her face. He sculpts her body instead; her hard, strong muscles. The curves and planes of her breasts and stomach.

For once, she feels seen for more than her tragedy. He is, in some ways, her rebound, though she knows Quynh is not dead.

Sometimes, Andromache wishes she were.

She still dreams, after all, of screams and endless reawakenings in the crushing hold of the sea.

<><><>

The modern age creeps up on Andy like an unwelcome surprise. It is horrid. She has not lost her allure, and now people with cameras and wide, fake smiles feel entitled to her countenance. Her face is not theirs. She likes that Booker takes down any pictures of her he finds online without her having to ask.

<><><>

After Rodin, Andy swore to herself that she would be no one’s muse again. It made her feel guilty enough, to be his when she had once promised herself to another. Another as beautiful as an arrow flying true, as strong as a bow strung tight.

When Nile arrives, and Quynh soon after, Andy does not believe it. She _cannot_. If Quynh is alive, then she must have lost her mind if not her life. If Quynh is alive, then she must hate Andromache with the fire of a thousand sunsets. If Quynh is alive… if Quynh is alive…

When Quynh is alive, the first thing she does is take Andy to the middle of the desert, as far away from large bodies of water as they can get. They simply exist with each other for a year. A year is nothing to Andy. A year is nothing to Quynh. A year is everything to them both.

Quynh is the only one to still call Andy “Andromache.” The word on Quynh’s lips sounds like a promise. Andy cannot stop apologizing for the first few weeks; Quynh kisses the tears away from her cheeks. Quynh wakes screaming many a time as they lie under the eaves of a white tent together; Andy smooths her hands down Quynh’s arms over and over again, a reminder that no cold, hard iron will ever touch Quynh’s skin again.

Andy realizes that they have both begun to heal.

Perhaps she will have more than a lifetime left with Quynh, after all.

<><><>

There is only one person to whom Andy will allow herself to be made a muse. It is a woman with raven-black hair and lungs that have too long known the swell of seawater. It is an archer with impeccable aim. It is an artist whose drawings are kept in a box in a cave in a country Nile and Joe and Nicky and Booker have not visited since before Quynh lived again.

Andy looks at the pictures, sometimes. They are always just right. Better than those of any other artist she has ever known. Because these stem from the hand of someone who knew Andy when she still held the mantle of Andromache of Scythia like a badge of honor. The hand of someone who still knows her now.

The drawings make her smile. Because in her eyes, the sorrow is gone, and the hope has returned.


End file.
